ngl the most important thing in my studio right now costs six dollars and it's a plastic clip fan from the corner store three blocks down. the little ones that clamp onto anything. i clipped it to the easel arm because the acrylic started tacking way too fast once the heat came in, and now i basically paint at the speed the fan lets me. i've learned more about my own timing from a cheap fan than from most of art school.

the tradeoff is it's loud enough that i have to pick between the fan and music. today i picked the fan. which means i painted the whole afternoon in this weird white-noise hum like the inside of a seashell and honestly? my hand was steadier.

the painting i'm working on is four feet of flat orange and one dumb white shape and it's fighting me on the value, everything else is cooperating just to lull me into a false sense of security about the orange.

anyway if you've got a cheap tool that accidentally became load-bearing for how you work i want to hear it